


this is the art of living with a ticking heart

by danielmorgans



Series: advice from dionysus [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, i apologize to the fandom for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 10:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danielmorgans/pseuds/danielmorgans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire has a lot of problems, but alcohol is not one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is the art of living with a ticking heart

It starts with a bottle and ends with a-

Well, we haven't quite got there yet. 

 

 

 

 

Here's how it starts; fourteen with a broken nose and a bottle of jack, and parents who don't blink when their son comes home at midnight on a school night wasted beyond reason. Fifteen, when he learns alcohol burns better when his skin is marred with cuts and bruises, with knuckles torn and lips spilling blood with every smile. Seventeen, when a fight ends in a bathroom stall with heaving chests and biting kisses, and boys with sharp tongues become something he wants. Eighteen, and the streets of Paris are his to take, with bloodshot eyes and charcoal-stained fingers and flasks full of something too strong for ten am lectures. 

It doesn't start when a pretty boy smiles at him, because Grantaire, well, he has his vices, but pretty boys aren't one of them. 

It doesn't start when Apollo himself bares his teeth and snarls, freedom and equality spilling from sculpted lips like blood 

 _But_ , Grantaire thinks as his fingers itch for something other than a bottle, _this may be where it ends_.

 

 

 

 

"Are you so foolish to think equality for all is achievable?" Grantaire says, fingers curled around a bottle with lips pulled up into something that's never quite a smile, and revels in the intake of breath across the café, the unspoken _round three, here we go again._

Enjolras tenses to the bone, and stalks forward with eyes bleeding fire, "If our cause is so foolish, why Grantaire, do you continue to burden us with your presence?" 

He leans back in the chair and his legs open in a sprawl, a smirk pulling his bruised lips apart, "To hear words spill from the lips of a God," he says, "my dear Apollo." 

 

 

 

 

Grantaire doesn't have a problem with alcohol. 

Grantaire has parents who never gave a shit and bullies who hit him until he learned to hit back and boys who kissed lies into his skin. Grantaire has a mind void of inspiration and an ever-dropping average and barely enough money to keep him from the streets. Grantaire has friends who see too much for their own good and a scar under his left eye from a fight that got out of hand. Grantaire sees a world of unchangeable cruelty and oppression and has something in himself that will eat him alive unless sated with a bottle. Grantaire is in love with a man who belongs to everyone and no one at all. 

Grantaire has a lot of problems, but alcohol is not one of them. 

 

 

 

 

"I would fear," he says, lips brushing against Enjolras' chest, "that I would tarnish you, if not for every touch I place upon you burns me, and so, my filth. You are the sun, and I am nothing but a child trying to reach you, wings of feather and wax upon my back."

His teeth are bared against Enjolras' skin. "I am doomed to fall. Will you catch me?"

Enjolras' steady breathing is the only answer and Grantaire turns his back. 

 

 

 

 

You never mention the word alcoholic. It's an unspoken rule that everyone abides by, even Enjolras when he is at his cruelest. No one says it and Grantaire pretends not to see it written in their gaze.

 

 

 

 

Prayers fall from his lips to be printed across the golden flesh laid out below him, and his shaking fingers dance across thousands of years of history, tracing veins with the blood of rebellion and angry men. 

"Apollo, Apollo, Apollo," he whispers, pressing closer and closer to skin glistening with sweat, to golden hair spread across his pillow like a halo, to an arched neck to which he sinks his teeth and relishes in the moan it draws. 

Grantaire bites and pulls and takes, takes, takes. Leaves his fingerprints in the indents of Enjolras' hips and the side of his thighs and around his wrists. He creates blemishes on the perfection before him and chokes on the hate building in his throat, wondering who, exactly, it is aimed at. 

 

 

 

 

The answer, Grantaire learns when he wakes to an empty bed, is both. 


End file.
